Scout Camp The Movie - A Review of Sorts

I watched "Scout Camp - The Movie" on DVD over a couple nights last week. I would have shared it with my troop, but the Scoutmaster and SPL went on vacation, and I like to keep my Netflix queue churning. Can rent and/or buy later.

Though Netflix had said there was a delay, the movie shipped right away after it came to the top of my list. This is a review (of sorts), but a little background. I heard about the movie a few weeks ago, but then looked for it online.

• @LatterDay_Scout Thanks for the "Scout Camp" movie tip and @ScoutCamper link too. Added to my #netflix queue: "long wait" :) 7:56 AM Aug 5th from web in reply to LatterDay_Scout

http://twitter.com/jspath55/statuses/3417853754

• Home from meeting at Baltimore Area Council and meanwhile Netflix has delivered "Scout Camp" ( #scouts the movie). Maybe tomorrow night zzzz
• 9:29 PM Aug 19th from web

After I posting that, I got replies:

• @jspath55 love to hear what you think of #scoutcampthemovie ? 12:59 AM Aug 20th from TweetDeck in reply to jspath55
• http://twitter.com/threecoinpro
  

So, a few of my takes:

• I enjoyed the movie, on the whole, and particularly liked the Spirit Stick emphasis, although I failed to see the point of the "free sticks" subplot.
• The scenes with Scouts doing flag ceremonies, falling out, patrol yells, and general pranks were about as accurate as you can get, without resorting to plain silliness or typical Hollywood script-by-committee tinkering. Likewise with uniform wear.
• Biggest downside from my view was lack of 2-deep leadership in many situations. We don't go on solo trips. Dangerous in several ways.
  
• Do not miss the outtakes with the assistant directors [incorrectly] herding cattle. I was tipped off to this with the altered text of "no animals were harmed during the making of this film. However..."
• Troops are rather on the Caucasian side. But, that's probably a truism, unfortunately. Working on it.
  

Now, how will we use this film? It's definitely superior, from a reality check standpoint, than the training clips distributed at round table and similar sessions. Will it recruit more boys into Scouting? Possibly, though my guess will be it will help Webelos and other Cubs get a better idea of what camp is like than the brochures and web sites tell them, much less the incomplete (almost said incoherent - and realized that is untrue) stories from our not-yet-First Class Scouts.

Links:

• http://twitter.com/ScoutCamper
• http://www.facebook.com/pages/Scout-Camp/31463653713
• http://krustbuster.com/
• http://scoutcampthemovie.com/
• http://www.netflix.com/Movie/Scout_Camp/70121504
  
  
  

p.s. They're going to need to alter the lettering from this:



To this:



:-)